
Why Every City Needs a Central Park

You are sitting with friends on a plaid blanket in a field. You've all brought drinks and food, creating quite the banquet for yourselves. You make sure to look over the maples and dogwoods encircling the field to see the rectangle of large buildings, famously called "twice as high as the Great Wall of China" by the park's designer 150 years ago. Instead of sirens and bus exhaust, you hear the violins and cellos of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
And you didn't even have to buy a ticket.
For many of us New Yorkers, Central Park is our shared backyard, a place where we sleep and read, play sports, and (illegally) barbecue. (But who'll tell the cops?) Residents and visitors alike have found in it an urban paradise that we couldn't imagine living without.
That word—paradise—comes from an Old Persian term for places that are "positive, harmonious and timeless." From pairi + diz, it means a "walled enclosure" or garden. As humans, perhaps especially as Christians, we are drawn to the idea of a walled garden, a sheltered escape from our daily lives and an invitation to renewal. Creating shared paradises like this, though, is a vocation that few Christians study or pursue. If they do, their pursuit takes place behind the scenes.
Central Park almost never happened. In 1811, when New York's commissioners established the grid design now considered a standard weave among city fabrics, the park wasn't included in the original plan for Manhattan Island. But surveyor John Randel Jr. eventually included the current Central Park to enable "the buying, selling and improving of real estate." When you are surrounded by water and have a cultural infrastructure that attracts elite professionals and artists, your greatest economic engine is the sale and resale of land. Parks, then, become an impediment to maximizing ROI.
In 1853, the city used eminent domain to acquire the 843 acres that is now Central Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux. The citizens who created the park did so from the comfort of salons. They wanted it to be a venue where socialites could be seen, as well as where the poor could breathe clean air and not "lift the bottle."

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Howard Freeman
Tembo: Congrats on your impending degree! You should definitely get in touch with the folks at Project for Public Spaces here in New York (http://www.pps.org/). They do work in cities all over the world, and they have been connected with all the urban planning thinkers here in New York over the years (Jane Jacobs, Holly Whyte, etc.). Howard
Tembo
Hello, Im about to graduate from university in Edinburgh Scotland with an Urban Planning degree. I am originaly from New york and would love to come out and work to make this happen, by Gods grace. hook a sister up!
Howard Freeman
For sure, Angel. Community Board 3 is solidly behind The Lowline proposal and what it might bring to the neighborhood in the way of public space. You live in a remarkable CB. Lots of public-private partnerships, and Sadik-Khan doing some interesting things, but I'm sure the real estate industry is the fiercest opponent to open space there, right?
Angel Ortiz
Right on! Great article for those seeking to be an impact inside and outside the church. I belong to Community Board Five in Manhattan and you can definitely make a difference in people's lives and the community as a whole. Thanks for your perspective and thoughts.